On Politics in Civil Society: Reflections about Civic Culture, Morality and Common Sense

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.11.2.0142
• Pages: 142-146
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Author: Rafael Hernández

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 11.2 WInter 2019

EDITORIAL

ON POLITICS IN CIVIL SOCIETY:

REFLECTIONS ABOUT CIVIC CULTURE,

MORALITY AND COMMON SENSE

Rafael Hernández1

Temas, Cuba

I recognise that my interpretation of politics in Cuba does not match most of

what I read on the social networks. I do not boast about this, although I also do

not take it badly, because if the truth is not rehearsed (as a good friend repeats),

I say that even less is it determined by a majority vote.

The approach of the ‘half-empty glass’, predominant in the comments that

circulate on the social networks, seems to me a totally legitimate expression of

citizen nonconformity. At the same time, if it is used in analysing politics, that

‘yes, but . . .’ approach has the defect of not taking responsibility for what is

really changing.

Frequently, political analysis is replaced by the direction that politics could

or should have taken. While starting from good desires may be valid as a per-

sonal opinion, it is unhelpful, however respectable they may be, if it is a ques-

tion of understanding the circumstances in which one lives – unless those

circumstances are taken as the aggregate of the perceptions shared in our ‘global

neighbourhood’.

Public discourse (that of politicians, intellectuals, government institutions

and civil society) often appeals to the history of ideas to make sense of the pre-

sent and its alternatives as a continuity with the past. Without ignoring the

weight of that continuity, no evocation of the past deciphers what is changing in

the exercise of power and in social relations hic et nunc.

1 Rafael Hernández is the founder and editor of Temas, a Cuban journal in the field of

social science and the humanities. A Visiting Professor at Columbia, Harvard, ITAM

(México), and Renmin University (China), his publications include 12 books of essays

about Cuba´s civil society, politics and culture, US-Cuban and international relations.